Obviously, SEO results grow over time. The traction you’re getting at 6 months typically is less than what you should be experiencing at 12 months.

Why so broad?

Typically that question is on a per domain basis. The SEO results your business is looking for (Local SEO, National SEO, Global SEO) is going to influence the types of SEO techniques that are performed on your site.

In short:

A local business website with 100 pages, running on WordPress, is different than a global eCommerce site, with millions of pages, running on Magento.

Can we speed it up?

Many factors determine how fast your SEO efforts will start delivering results. If you have a new website, new domain name and fresh content without a business history it could take a while. Sometimes up to six months before you see results.

The Bump

Below is a new website and cold-start domain (with no history or activity…ever). We worked on consistently for 6 months. The drastic increase represents what we call the bump and it typically happens after 6 months.

For this particular site we posted an average of 2000 – 2500 words a month for six months. This is in addition to heavy on-site and off-site optimization techniques and true organic link building (no bought links here).

We expect the traffic to continue to increase by 50% to 60% over the next 6 months. In short, don’t expect success to come easy. Unless you write some really awesome content and have a very niche and popular website.

Positive and Negative SERP Adjustments aka Fools Gold

Before the bump we have what is typically the equivalent of Fools Gold SERP increases. This is especially true for new websites. But not so much the case for websites that have been active and were just in need of SEO adjustments.

In the image below you will see a consistent pattern of a giant jump followed by a nominal fall in ranking, then proceeded by a subtle change the following couple of months.

The long story of why I think this happens: With this particular site it was old but never worked on. So it had history with search engines but nothing to positively rank for. Which was due to content issues and normal SEO fundamentals.

But as we fixed the on-site issues and improved the content, search engines become excited to rank those pages. So they gave them a nice jump in the SERPs. But typically what happens is those search results begin to fall back and then settle/stabilize. Once the SERPs stabilize that’s typically where you start to see slow, but incremental changes, in search engine rankings as you implement your continued SEO strategy.

But this time those results are more stable and consistent. Typically they do not drastically jump around. Unless you have an alogo update or something else catastrophic happen on your website.

The problem with the Fools Gold period is clients can become excited. Then quickly discouraged when the following month those results change. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.

SEO is an investment

Think of SEO as a 401k approach versus a roulette approach. Your efforts will begin to compound over time and gradually deliver greater returns the longer you do it.

To understand why it takes SEO a while to start working, let’s break it down and look at the parts:

Success in SEO, as with most things in life, comes down to mastering the basics.

With that in mind, here are some SEO basics that everyone should understand.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, or natural search results on search engines.

All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

Search Engine Basics

This starts with understands the three main types of traffic companies receive from search.

Map Listings – Google Maps started in 2005 as a way for consumers to find local establishments on the platform. It became the world’s leading map application with new features added on a regular basis.

Organic – Traditional search results from Googles search engine. We discuss more below about the algorithm that determines these rankings.

PPC – Pay per Click campaigns are when a company pays for their search engine rankings through ads. These ads are traditionally on the top and right of the Google search. Pay per click campaigns are also called Search Engine Marketing.

Four Determining SEO Factors

1. Keywords and Search Phrases

Keywords help you drive the targeted traffic that you want to your site. With all of the changes that Google has made over the past year, this means you need to create quality traffic that your visitors will like as well.

When you can do this successfully, you have the power to find the quality clients you want for your business. It is not easy, but with the ideas above you have the strategies to make it work for your business.

2. Your Domain Name

At the root level your SEO revolves around your domain name. Does your domain have keywords in it? Having a domain name with keywords in it can accelerate your SEO efforts. But its not a silver bullet technique. Even domain names with SEO rich keywords can rank horribly.

Did you just buy your domain name? Relationships built on the internet with search engines revolves around trust. Mimicking real life to determine trust search engines must determine you know what you are talking about. They also factor in the age of your domain to determine the legitimacy of you information, website and business.

Is your domain penalized? If you bought your domain name from a third party auction site its possible its been abused and discarded. If it was involved in malicious activity or black hat tactics and flagged by search engines it will take you a long time to reverse the damage.

Was your domain owned by a business outside of your geographical area? Sometimes when a business closes they sell their domain name. Perhaps your business has had the.org and now the .com is available. You might be excited because it was owned by a business in another state long before you started your business.

The only problem in the beginning is that domain has a long history with the previous business in their geographical location. While this won’t ruin your chances it does put a bit of a roadblock until you assume ownership and the internet begins to recognize the owners new address.

3. Your Business and Location

For starters every business should claim and list their business with Google. It’s free and a great tool for improving your businesses online presence.

What does your business provide? If you have a niche business serving a limited clientele you will see faster results if your clients are specifically searching for your services. For example your business only recycles cooking oil for restaurants in Fort Myers, Florida.

If you are in a more competitive field, like dentistry, you will have more competition. Not only are there more dentists than oil recycling companies, they are spending money to consistently outperform their competition.

4. Your Content

Your website content needs to do something remarkable. It needs to be written, so humans will enjoy it and Google will rank it. This is a tall order for any site to accomplish. It is a primary reason so many businesses give up in disgust after not receiving enough traffic early on in their SEO campaign.

Guide To Local SEO

Conclusion

As you can see, using search engine optimization for your business is not a one size fits all task. The bottom line is that if you’re focusing on a small group of generic keywords, you’re probably not being found by most of the people who are searching for you.

Consistency is important when it comes to any kind of SEO. Stick with your marketing plan, even if you aren’t seeing noticeable results after month 4, time and commitment will get you the search engine traffic results you want to see.

If you have any further questions on SEO, then take advantage of our Free SEO Audit today. This audit helps you understand what your next steps need to be for your business.

About Charlie Rose

At SEO Mechanic, there’s nothing more important than the health and organic search performance of your website. Want to learn more? Let’s chat.

123 responses to “SEO 101: How Long Does SEO Take to Start Working?”

As far as how long do rankings take… we’ve found that shorter keywords, especially more competitive keywords will take 9months to more than a year to get to the top of page one.
Google has really been slowing this down in the past year. A few of our sites, had some of the best SEO work we’ve ever done applied to it, and we took it from brand new site to the top of page 2, where is sat there for like 8 months… then without changing anything, it started to climb up to the #1 spot (which took 4 months). We’ve been able to replicate these results over and over with out test sites, point is rankings take time, and Google will intentionally (and randomly) hold your site back for a period of time before it let’s you take that all elusive #1 spot.

Thank you for this, I have been wondering how long does it takes to see any results, I have been doing some work on my site, another thing I am wondering is that If we do all the SEO work and what we should do to maintain a site in the top #10 of google?

I wrote an article about this topic. However, in a different perspective.

One thing that I have emphasized in this blog was the changes in Google Algorithm. Since 2011 to 2016 there are approximately 106 known changes in Google’s algorithm, which I believe affects our SEO effort.

Hi,
I have my website for more than a year now but just indexed the website since 3 months. My question is how long SEO will take to bring some results, is it calculated from the time I registered the domain and published my website or from the time I indexed the website?
Thanks

It took me over a year to see results and rank on Page 1 of Google.
I have strong backlinks and lots of content however my industry is very competitive and I’m competing with sites that have been in the business for over 7 years.

One thing Ive noticed is pages with great content immediately outranks others within a few weeks. So focus on content more than on page and off page SEO.

My website is about 5 years old. At some point i had the first 3 positions on google. Then i hired an seo company and i ended up in the page 105! Since then i sorted out the issue and the site is keep moving. One day i am on the first page, 5th or 6th, then i am sent to page 20 the next day. This is going on for 2 years now. One day i am busy like hell & the next day relax big time.
I had few website health checks but nothing wrong comes up (beside small things)

The biggest mistake I see business owners, entrepreneurs make when it comes to their SEO is a lack of patience. In order to see good results, they’ll have to wait for up to 8 months depending on the competitiveness of the industry. Sometimes a year or two if they had any penalties or back hat SEO in the past.

Thanks very much! Several years ago, we inadvertently discovered ourselves at number 1 for quite a few keywords for another website we ran. So began my study and fascination with SEO! Can’t stop reading about it, there’s always more to learn.

hey, please tell me , i have a blog who’s name ezzyweb.com and i have install yoast seo plugin on wordpress . i have done my good level of seo with yoast . i have followed all the instructions.there is showing green signal . so how long time it can take for ranking on google.

Thanks for your info. I wasnt aware that it takes such a long time for SEO to work. Hopefully with some of your tips and advice I will be able to get more traffic to my blog http://www.combatsportsfitness.net

Hey, Thank you for sharing useful factors. I would say ranking totally depends on keywords competition as well as search engine optimization. IF you doing in a right way it will not take much time to get up in google searches but as you know Google is updating day by day which may affect SEO effort sometime. The post is really helpful for me and my fellows. Thank you

Great article with so much information regarding how to get ranking in a good way. Indeed, Content and keywords are really important in search engine optimization. Totally agreed with all above points. We really need to be consistent.

Hi,
Very nice article, i appreciate your article hope this article will be help me surly. i have one web named http://www.comedymood.com now his ranking above 1 lac but i want below 6 thousand. After reading your aricle i will improve my SEo work
Thanks

First, I’m Joey and this is the first time I come with seomechanic.com – a beautiful design!
You using Private Blog Network for your website? Should or not in 2018? And How to Build a PBN in 2018?
Thanks for sharing list blog commenting!

Hiya – how do you know if you have been penalised, is there a specific notification or is it just a ranking change? interested to find out. I use both MOZ and SME (free tools) but can’t see anything obvious.

What if we choose a key phrase that has virtually 0 competition? In that case, we are still looking at 4–6 months before Google acknowledges it? Or will it be indexed and rise to the top more or less instantly?

Thanks for talking me off the ledge. Been working at it non-stop. Even started taking on some clients of my own to avoid “Over-SEOing” my site. I keep feeling like one morning I’m going to wake up and BOOM! All my keywords will be at the top. I guess I just have to be patient.

Great article! I’ve been trying to find this out for a while now. My SEO is stagnant, but I know I have to be patient as my backlink profile grows. You’re the second person to say wait four to six months. Another person said wait after posts. Patience is key!

The problem with new businesses is that all want their website to rank #1 in the search result instantly. Sadly, SEO doesn’t work that way as shown clearly in your article. This is a great post for those who want to understand the basics of SEO and how it works. Thank you, Charlie for sharing this.

It is the best article I have ever read about SEO. As a beginner I have many questions and you helped me to find answers to almost all my answers! I am going to read other articles. What can you advise for beginners as me 😉 What else should we know?

Thanks for the article. I have recently started SEO and my client is very inpatient. He wants to see results the next month, so I have to explain to him that it does not work that way, it takes time, etc…
SEO is hard, but possible.

I thought that it was interesting that you mentioned we should see some results after about four months. My friend has decided to start using SEO to her advantage to get her business out there. I think that it’s a good little guide to have and it really helps with making some goals.

Once again Charlie thanks for the article. In my opinion everything you point out is bang on here. The increase in time that it takes to rank new sites now makes complete sense, and also ends up with the user having a better experience. One of the reasons that over 75% of searchers don’t leave the first page is because improvements to the search engine algorithms have resulted in much more relevant results to the searchers.

I can recall, years ago, entering a search term “real swords” and having google return a SERP that contained a variety of sites that included everything from aliens, to sports, to porn.

Hello i have website with 44 articles,last 1 month i have index some of page to top of search engine first page.my questions is how long to visitor start to come.my hope is 100 articles end of year.I have low compotitions and good search monthy between 1k to 10000 and 10000 to 100000
Will my progress will be good after 1 to two year

It’s just an amazing blog. I found much information from it. Really this blog is very informative. Thanks for sharing the determining factors of SEO. Besides this, all information is outstanding. Keep it up.

Good Article, Well Written and simply executed to understand everything. Thanks for writing such a good Article writing on this Topic . I am really impressed with your ways of article writing with this depth.I enjoy this post and will try to read and review more.

Fantastic article, but the question I can’t seem to find an answer for anywhere is about established pages. I get that it takes a long time for newly published pages , but I can’t find any case studies on pages that have been there for years, and I decide to go back and update and add better content etc. Is the timeline the same?

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You have furnished the right information that will be useful to anyone at all time. The points mentioned in this article are very unique and important. Thanks for sharing such informative article on SEO strategies.

Well, nowadays Google ranks a website really fast if there is huge traffic coming a staying to our website. A few years back building a large number of backlinks were given importance but nowadays that is a pretty time waste. So the question is how to get that huge traffic. Well, the simple answer is on-page optimization and a strong Social media presence. Yes, Social media marketing is very important now.
and we must increase the site speed and reduce its bounce rate by improving the UI UX of our website.

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Highly unlikely unless your site has a high authority. Our experience with 50 -100DA sites will get extra love much quicker from search engine indexes. Would be a great study. Thanks for leaving a comment!

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I do like that with SEO, it does take about four to six months to see results. If I had to get that, I would know that I’d have to be patient as it doesn’t happen overnight. That and with whatever SEO work I would want to be done, I’d just be sure to have it done by a professional.

[…] The first words a company – whether it’s a one man operation or an international conglomeration – is going to ask its marketing department when starting a campaign is typically, “How much is this going to cost me?” In today’s world of social media presence being “THE” thing, and search engines like Google running the place, the answer to that question isn’t always straightforward. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, always seems like the best answer, especially if your marketing department consists of, well, you. It’s free and relatively easy, right? Not always. And let’s not forget the old adage, you must spend money to make money. That is where SEM, Search Engine Marketing, comes into play. And spending that little bit can get you big returns quickly. While SEO doesn’t cost you hard, cold cash at its offset, it DOES cost something that may be just as, if not more, valuable – time and energy. If you are working to build a small local business, something that generates traffic to your website organically, rather than through paying for advertising, may seem like the best – sometimes only – option. However, chances are you are working day and night at the business side of your business, with little time to spare on blogging, ensuring your website is relevant and current, and developing keyword search strategies with the analyzed data that you collect every day. And, yes, in order to see long term returns on your investment into SEO, those are just the beginning. When I say “long term”, I do mean it – as Charlie Rose notes in his 2018 article “SEO 101: How Long Does SEO Take to Start Working?”, those seeking to see results from their hard work at SEO shouldn’t expect to see them for four to six months – at a minimum (Rose, 2018). Rose also links the graphic below from Search Engine Land, which is a great tool to helping folks begin their SEO journey, as well as getting a comprehensive checklist of what the right stuff is. It can be done – with little to no upfront capital – but unrealistic expectations can frustrate the best of us, and this is a long haul approach to marketing. When you get to that final page of Google Ads asking you to enter your credit card information, you cringe while doing it. What if there are a ton of clicks that lead to nothing? The truth is, this is a possibility – however highly unlikely. With the right keywords, targeting your market well and efficiently – partnered with great content written, a strong social media presence and a killer website – the PPC (pay per click) approach is a very wise and low risk financial investment. But wait? Everything mentioned is exactly the same recipe for a great SEO campaign too, right? That’s absolutely correct. The key is a combination of these two – developing a great SEO strategy can help your business retain its growth in the long term, while SEM can help cut down on the time it takes to build that momentum, by placing your business front and center quicker.The Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://searchengineland.com/seotableRose, C. (2018, January 15). SEO 101: How Long Does SEO Take to Start Working? • SEO Mechanic. Retrieved from https://www.seomechanic.com/seo-101-how-long-does-seo-take/ […]